38. Adelaide
THIRTY-EIGHT
ADELAIDE
Mindlessly walking across New York City wasn’t in my plans for today. Tears burned the outer corners of my lids, but they stayed put.
They’ve carried themselves for a long time, they could do it a while longer.
A beautiful day crowded over the city with the sun shining down in late-August heat.
It could’ve been a perfect day.
He prepared seven themes for seven missed birthdays only to break my heart before the last one. Maybe this was a sign that we couldn’t work. Love was a beautiful feeling but not every beautiful feeling is meant to be felt. Our story survived years of pain and minutes of trying to forget it.
I’d forgotten moments of it and was entirely close to forgetting Christian when he pranced back into my life. I wanted to pretend that Christian loved me when he held my hand and led me to each tent, when he kissed away a tear, or when he hugged me back.
My heels clacked against the cement road before squishing against grass.
Straight ahead, I sat in between my parents and let the silence invade my senses. Every thought about Christian came into me like a tornado destroying everything in its path. However, instead of indulging in it. I moved on.
Maybe he didn’t mean?—
It doesn’t matter.
Beg , he said. I begged once and he threw me out.
Confidence didn’t hold well within me, but I would never sweep that small portion away to get him again.
My knees held invisible reminders of that day.
Each intrusive thought flew away with a hefty flick.
I didn’t speak.
Didn’t say a damn word.
My parents comforted me with their undying presence, and I bathed in it, wishing they were here.
To hold me.
To love me.
To tell me it was okay.
Instead, I was left alone with these thoughts and another broken heart.
When it got too much, I laid down and looked up at the sky—eventually, darkness lured me in.
I woke up with heavy rain pouring down on me and my phone buzzing inexhaustibly. My clothes were soaked from head to toe. Shutting my phone off, I covered my head with my hands and ran out of the graveyard.
Afternoon travelled well into the evening, the sky a hue of pink, orange, and purple. Despite the heavy rain, not a single dark cloud covered the sunset.
It was unreal— magical .
I stopped running.
Rain clung to my soul and evaporated its smell into my nose where I held onto its nostalgia.
My arms fell to the sides, and I let the rain drown me. It felt good. More than good. Like all of me was washing away with the world and I’d be okay when this was over.
I’d spent a long-time wallowing within myself, it was time to wallow on the outside. The world was going through the same cycle as me and it would be foolish of me not to follow along.
I’d turned the street near Brooklyn Bridge. For a regular Tuesday, it wasn’t packed. I stopped walking and turned my head up to the sky, rain pouring hard onto my face. It didn’t matter. Right now, nothing did but this feeling of being completely free from my thoughts.
Something barricaded the rain from reaching me.
Opening my eyes, an orange rustic umbrella hung over me.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
Straightening myself, eyes repulsed to the back of my head before I turned around to face him. A devastating sight. His shirt was soaked through, and wet hair fell over his forehead.
A paper crumpled in his hand.
The sour expression did nothing to hide his attractiveness—high cheekbones, pouty lips—Christian mad was a sight indeed, but Christian furious was a recipe resulting in more broken hearts.
I had to remind myself that this was the same man who insulted my aunt, the one who insulted me and my struggles.
Who didn’t run after me when I left and who lied to me by saying he wanted to love me even though his actions near the end did nothing but refute his stupid claims. This was no time to back down.
Attractive as he might be, I’d had enough of his indecency and annoying traits. There was a lot I could sacrifice for love, but losing my self-respect wasn’t one I was willing to repeat.
“Watch your tone when you speak to me, Christian.” I didn’t have the time to be surprised at my strong voice. Instead, keeping my eyes on him, I kept myself stern.
“Answer the fucking question and then maybe I’ll think about it,” his nostrils flared. He looked down at my wetted lips before shifting back up.
We were back to square one.
Fighting and bantering.
Pushing and pulling.
Getting nowhere.
Realistically we didn’t fit in any category. We weren’t friends, we weren’t lovers, we were two people stuck in the space between—in the constant struggle of description but couldn’t figure it out.
There was no rhythm to this relationship. I wanted him and he wanted to want me. We were not the same.
And I wasn’t going to let myself fall under his false pretences again.
“You let me go,” an outline of a ring hung to a chain through his shirt stopped me. This whole time… He had it.
A vicious wave coursed through me. “What the hell is that?”
Christian’s expression resembled that of a frog. He stared and stared, afraid that if he’d look down, he’d see exactly what I saw.
It was clear that day that around his neck, tied to the silver chain, was the first ring I ever made.
Taking advantage of his occupied hands, I reached up to pull the necklace out of his shirt.
Shaking and disoriented, I analyzed the metal.
The same jagged lines.
Identical bumps.
A small A in one area.
“ How ,” my voice shook. “How do you have this?”
Christian revolted, stepping back, yet kept the umbrella entirely on me. “That’s none of your business.”
I scoffed. “It kind of is when you’re wearing my ring around your neck.”
“I found it.”
“Keep lying to me and see if I believe it.”
His face hardened. “It’s just a fucking ring.”
Rain slapped against the hard concrete floor, yelling in the middle of our heavy pants and blazed gazes. Pissed was an understatement. Confused was an exaggeration because I was baffled—exonerated by his lack of honesty.
“Where did you find it?”
Silence.
That was all I needed to know.
My vision plummeted in blurry waves because Christian scoured through trash to keep it.
“You told me you wanted to love me,” I ignored his narrowed slots and continued. “But all along, you’ve been loving me out of spite. My ring, the hospital, the tents, this . You’ve been dragging me along with our history and confusing me with all your mockery.”
“My love for you isn’t a mockery.”
“Oh, please.” I rolled my eyes. “You married me under the ruse of wanting to help me but all along you’ve been making a complete fool out of me.”
A panicked look. “That isn’t true?—”
“Then what is ?” I yelled. “Tell me what is true. Because loving me isn’t, marrying me isn’t?—”
He dropped the umbrella. “I am your husband.”
Brutally, I wiped away the first fallen tear. Whether it fell from my eyes or from the sky—I wasn’t sure. What I knew was that both me and the earth were grieving our broken hearts. “It’s temporary.”
His hands fisted against the paper, veins popping out. He stopped himself from reaching out to me when I wanted him to. “You think this is temporary ?”
“Our contract states one year, so yes I do think that.” I peeked up at him through wet eyelashes. His muscles tensed beneath his shirt. Each inhale released as a fiery exhale. “It’s not like you woke up one day and decided that loving me was gonna make you happy after making a complete idiot out of me.”
Lethally calm.
“Do you think I’d put this much effort into someone I thought was fucking temporary?”
“You use love as a blanket to cover up the feelings you truly feel. You said you wanted to love, not that you did.” I tucked back a couple of wet hair strands. “You can’t just love me again because you want to.”
The scene in front of me felt like deja vu.
Like the rest of the world watched us from afar and possibly yelled at us to either kiss or break up. I wondered what we looked like to them. Two people with a past trying to make today work. When it doesn’t, what do we do?
Christian confused me.
Did he love me for the past seven years?
Or did he love me now?
Does he even love me at all?
The umbrella slipped from his fingers. Just when I thought his presence couldn’t tamper with my logic, he stood—cupping my freezing wet hands in his own. Then began to say, “Love is a choice. Loving you is my choice.”
He thumbed over the skin. Those intense hazel orbs orchestrated a disastrous performance. “Since when does it have to be this fucking feeling of falling. Why can’t it be knowing what’s behind the fucking door and turning the knob because I want to?”
I pulled away, turning my back to him. “That’s not how love is supposed to be.”
“That’s how my love is!” His aggression whipped me around. If I thought his gaze held devastation, I was wrong. His body tensed and invalidated against him, working to break him, to create a disaster not him nor I could recover from.
Masking my own feelings, I swallowed hard. I was never good at talking, not with Umaima, not with Hasan. But with Christian, thoughts poured out and I didn’t calculate over singular letters. “Then what you’re feeling isn’t love, it’s familiarity, it’s reconciliation, it’s memories . We aren’t meant to last forever.”
Face to face.
Nose to nose.
Christian uttered with sheer desperation. “I am your husband.”
“For a year!”
He brought the paper up. I stared at it, but he stared at me. It was soaked through—unreadable. But the subtle word of marriage persisted through. “No,” rain soaked through the contract. “I’m your husband forever.”
The Christian who kept his control, who kept his calm broke in front of me the second he ripped apart our marriage contract. It didn’t take much pulling as the pieces liquified themselves and turned into grainy wet paper and stuck to his fingers like a disrespectful child wanting attention.
Our contract was that.
A child we birthed together, and we were abandoning it.
“ I love you , Adelaide!”
Was he…
He was.
Christian was crying .
“Nothing between us has been temporary. It never will be. I spent the past seven years moping in the lack of your presence, hoping that one day I’d be complete when I saw you again. I wasn’t. I’ve never been. But you see me, and you want me, despite bleeding on my broken pieces. I love you because you love me the way you love everything else. You love me like I’m normal and you love me like I’m human. You see me for my flaws instead of my beauty, you speak to me with kindness when how I behaved towards you was anything but. But I love you. I love you for all of you. I love you, I love you, I love you. It’s underwhelming, this word of love. Because it isn’t enough to explain to you how my heart is slipping inside of me, moving to one side then to another. It doesn’t stop thumping and all I can say— all I have is the ability to say I love you and it isn’t enough.”
I couldn’t do it.
All this composure.
All this waiting and overthinking.
I just couldn’t do it anymore.
What was the point of holding in this much vexation when all I wanted was for us to go home together?
Thunder echoed into the sky, still without the barrier of clouds.
Chests pranced, blissfully following the specific tune of people like me who couldn’t give in.
Christian wasn’t good at showing his love. He hid it beneath his empty stares, his vicious banter, his useful hands. But I should have known that each action was a proclamation of love.
I wasn’t mad at him for loving me.
I was mad at myself for noticing too late.
He wasn’t making a fool out of me.
I was making a fool out of myself, and it hurt.
It hurts because I would love him until my last breath screamed to live in order to love him more .
He was the air I breathed, the circumference of the earth that equaled to infinity. I wanted him like I wanted nothing else.
I could lose everything in the next second but if I lost him, I’d die.
Sobs broke through my thoughts, falling at his very feet. “I love you, Christian.”
Through the heavy pouring, he heard me.
The next thing I knew, I was in Christian’s arms, and he was kissing me like the world was ending and he needed to have me one last time.